The great rodent war of '07

We saw some mouse droppings in the house when we moved in. We vacuumed well, scrubbed out the kitchen drawers and cabinets, tossed mothballs in the attic, and that was that. This winter, they came back. More mothballs in the attic has pretty much taken care of them though we occasionally hear one in the wall.

But we also have A RAT. YUCK. At first I wasn't going to blog about the rat. They're nasty and it's embarrassing to have one. After some reflection, I decided that country life has many aspects and if I only blogged poetic and idyllic it wouldn't be nearly as interesting. Heck, half the fun in suffering is being able to complain loudly about it to others.

The rat left a couple of droppings in the mud room where we keep the rabbit and chicken feed (in plastic garbage cans with snap-on lids, now). We set out a glue trap and it got dragged around behind the tool box and abandoned. We set a plastic snap trap and it's been licked clean and flipped over but no rat. We set a metal spring trap and it hasn't been sprung (except that one time I stepped on it in my sock feet while vacuuming but that's not part of this story).

We made a trap with an empty soda can strung on a length of coat hanger (so it would spin) and suspended over a bucket with some water in the bottom. The idea is that the mouse/rat steps on the can to reach the peanut butter and then falls in the bucket and drowns. I didn't like the notion of drowning things, but we were getting desperate. Our engineering marvel was ignored.

We got a fancy electric mouse/rat trap and baited it with special guaranteed irresistible bait. NOTHING. Apparently the rat didn't get the memo about how irresistible the bait is.

Then one day we heard a loud scritching digging noise in the pantry. We looked and looked, but the sound was in the walls. The next day, we saw a newly dug rat-hole in the wall and saw that the bag of dog food had been chewed into. Once we get him we'll patch that hole but for now we figure patching it may only encourage to eat through the wall somewhere else. We figured we'd use the hole to our advantage.

We put a metal mouse trap right in front of the hole and went to bed, chuckling smugly to ourselves. Ah, yes. We had him now. We knew exactly where he'd be walking and we were prepared. Life was good.

The next morning we saw the metal spring trap had been moved maybe 1/4" and the dog food bag had again been visited. How the rat got past that metal trap is beyond me. It was right in front of his hole! Even after he'd slid it over a bit, it was still right there. How could he not spring it?

So the next day we put a glue trap right in front of the hole, and held it in place with two jars of cooking oil.

It sat like that for several days with (we thought) no activity. However after having photographed the scene of the crime, I do think there's a little smudge of gray fur on the glue in front of the hole.

I went and double-checked. Yes, a smudge of fur. I'm absolutely beside myself. I refuse to be outsmarted by a rodent.